The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set

by Matthew Davenport

  I pulled Nancy away from her father again. “Nancy, we have to go. We can’t stay here.”

  “We can’t leave him!”

  I slapped her. Hard. “Nancy, he would not want you to die. Not here. Not now. Not ever. We must go.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  Leo stepped forward and handed Nancy her father’s journal.

  “We need you to read your father’s code for us. We need you to take us to the armory.”

  Nancy pulled the journal from Leo’s hands but kept staring at his blood-stained coat. “I thought he were hurt?”

  Leo smiled, “It was only a graze. I have a tendency to be overly dramatic.”

  Chapter 11: The Madness

  We moved at a slower pace than we had through the first proto-shoggoth tunnels. Leo’s pain might have been suppressed, but the damage to his abdomen was still there. I could see the frustration in his face whenever the glow from the lighter flashed across him.

  I led the charge with Leo guarding our flank. Nancy was between us and was another reason for our slow progression. It wasn’t that her grief was slowing her, although I wouldn’t fault her if it was. Instead, she had buried her grief under the weight of her new responsibility with the journal.

  So far, Nancy had been able to read the markings in the proto-shoggoth’s tunnels and that had been the first sign that we were on the right path. Leo and I had never noticed the marks the first time we had moved through the tunnels. They looked nothing like the markings throughout the rest of the city. Instead, these were cuts in the walls, slashes that looked similar to Celtic Ogham. I figured that the proto-shoggoths must have needed their own slave language. Similar incidents had been reported throughout all of human history, and the parallels to the proto-shoggoths were both interesting and terrifying at the same time.

  Before we could dive back into the tunnels, Nancy had needed to read her father notes and locate where he thought the armory would be. After that, we knew the general direction that we needed to go. Periodically, Nancy would see something on the walls that would cause her to shout or panic and we would switch direction without asking her why. I desperately wanted to know why. I had an ominous feeling that Strobel was also moving in the correct direction, and I didn’t want to waste the time learning the language of the proto-shoggoth or the dangers that their world might have presented to us, no matter how much I wanted to.

  “This place makes no sense,” Leo said as we took another turn. “My sense of direction is very good, and we should be well outside of the mountains by now.”

  I nodded without looking back at the Frenchman. “This entire place exists in our reality, but not fully a part of it. It’s part of the void, but on the wrong side of the veil.”

  Leo asked, “What about the roads and separate buildings? We have seen none of those since we entered.”

  “I think,” I answered, “that those were there as part of our understanding. We expected to see an alien city, so we saw an alien city.”

  “What does that even mean?” Leo sounded even more frustrated.

  Nancy halted in her steps, lifted her free hand and wiggled her fingers. “It’s magic. Now shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”

  I didn’t have to see Leo’s face to see the frown that he was most definitely wearing.

  We exited that proto-shoggoth tunnel into a room that spanned at least a hundred yards across and up. I forced my mind to pull away from examining, yet again, the complete departure from physics and walked into the room.

  The room, for all of its vastness, was completely empty. At the far end, I could see another entrance similar to the one that we had just walked through. The floor was the big departure from the rest of the city. It was covered with large grooves and seams that spanned the entirety of the room. It was an intricate pattern that interweaved across the room, creating hexagonal shapes that fit together and overlapped each other. It was as mesmerizing as the most beautiful piece of art, and the more I looked at it the more obsessed I became with trying to understand it.

  With considerable effort, I regained my senses and turned to see that both Nancy and Leo had fallen under the control of the hypnotic floor.

  I shook both of my friends until their glazed look vanished. Leo was easier to bring back than Nancy had been, but after our time in the Blasted Heath I had expected as much.

  “What is this?” I asked Nancy.

  She looked at me with a moment of confusion. I am normally the one with the answers, but this time I needed her expertise with her father’s journal. This was beyond me.

  “This is what father called ‘The Pit.’” she pointed across the room to the other entrance. “The armory is through that tunnel, but crossing this room is something that humans shouldn’t be able to do.”

  “Why not?” Leo asked.

  She waved her hand at the floor, and as her eyes passed over it they started to glaze. I snapped my fingers and Nancy was back with us.

  “The floor has three different radiations that grow with intensity the closer we get to that door. It’s a type of defense against the lesser creatures entering.”

  “Radiations?” I asked.

  Nancy nodded. “Not like what we know of as radiation, but something from beyond that is emitted by whatever is under the floor.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said. “What do they do?”

  She waved her hand again. “I do not know.” Nancy gulped as she thought of William. “My father knew that they existed and he knew of the location of the armory, but he didn’t know what these radiations are supposed to do.”

  “It’s alright, though, isn’t it?” Leo asked. “Humans cannot pass ‘The Pit,’ so the Nazis have lost and we do not need to destroy the city.”

  I shook my head and turned toward him. “You have fought enough of the Nazis in the last few years to know that they are not all human. This fight is far from over.”

  He stomped his foot on the floor that kept calling for my attention. “Than what can we do?”

  Leo was right, for all of our otherworldly exploits, we were still only human.

  “Couldn’t you shield our minds,” Nancy asked. “Like you did when father and I were unconscious in the woods.”

  “That wasn’t a shield, I just made us harder to see...” An idea began to form in my mind. “I could try something else, though.”

  My hesitancy to explain frustrated Leo. “What? What could you do?”

  “I could shield your minds with a different spell. I could take another mind, or presence, and blanket it over your minds.”

  “No,” Leo said immediately understanding my meaning.

  “Why not?” Nancy asked.

  Leo shook his head and jabbed a finger in my direction. “He means he would take the brunt of the attack meant for us. It would be his mind that he put in front of our own.”

  “It could work, Leo.” I argued. “My mind has shown to have an amazing durability under the powers of the void.” Leo was shaking his head. I pointed at his stomach. “Dammit, Leo! Anything to stop them!”

  Leo stopped and looked at the waist of his coat. It was still wet with his slowly leaking blood. “Then use my mind as the shield.”

  “I can’t,” I answered. “I can’t manipulate someone else’s mind as easily as I can my own. It would be like trying to drive your truck from the outside. It can’t be done.”

  He stomped around for another minute or so, cursing in French, and I couldn’t blame him. He had accepted his death knowing that his friends had the potential to live on because of his sacrifice. Now he was seeing that his hopes were not necessarily fact.

  I looked to Nancy during Leo’s frustrated tantrum and saw that she was only staring blankly at the tunnel from which we had come. It wasn’t the floor’s doing. She had seen enough death and she was only waiting for us to make the decision so that we could continue. Nancy no longer cared.

  Leo stomped up to me and thrust his index finger at my face. “F
ine! What do you need from us?”

  I pulled them both in close to me, one on each side, and placed my hands on their foreheads.

  “All you need to do is walk to the door. If my hand starts to slip, grab it and hold it on your forehead. You will be walking and guiding me, my feet will just be going through the motions.”

  They both nodded and I gathered my will. Mixing my concentration with the energy of the void, I expanded my consciousness to include them both. I couldn’t read their thoughts or anything to that nature. It was more like I could sense a mild empathy.

  Nancy was a storm of emotion that rolled just under the surface. There was so much going on in her emotions that it came across as a quiet static to me.

  I almost couldn’t sense Leo. It took me a while to recognize that the small sadness I felt wasn’t my own. Leo didn’t want to die, and I didn’t blame him.

  “Walk,” was all that I said that started our troop in motion.

  Both of my friends began to march slowly across ‘The Pit.’ It didn’t take a genius to know where the name came from. The further in we went, and with three people’s worth of radiation hitting me, all that I wanted to do was crawl into the floor. I wanted to fall into its embrace and feel the warmth of...of...

  Something must have happened because I felt a sudden jolt as I was hauled upward. I must have started to sag to the floor.

  My floor. That beautiful floor. It knew me like no one had ever known me. Not my parents, long destroyed in their own nightmares. Not Leo, my friend and ally in this war who I had led to his death. Not Olivia, who had even been a part of my very soul.

  Olivia who I had betrayed.

  What vile creature was I that I had betrayed the only being in existence who could possibly understand everything that I...

  My hand was grasped and thrust against something cold and clammy. It snapped me back to my mind quickly enough to realize that I had been falling into a pit of despair.

  Fire.

  Fire was suddenly in my mind. It raged inside and tore at my every thought. My throat was in unknowable agony and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that it was because I was screaming. So much pain. If only I could let it out. Let it out. Let it out. Let it out. Let it out.

  Something had grabbed my other hand. It was slapping it. I had to get away. Fight this thing. Always fight. Fighting will free me. Break me from the fire. The fire. In my head. The fire that looked like...

  Terror. Oily black horrors from the ends of time. Slimy tendrils of soul-staining evil wrapped around each of my hands and tearing at my flesh. As my flesh sloughed from my bones the putrid oily things consumed it with their mouths that were nothing like mouths. It screamed with an alien voice but I knew the words. Andrew Doran must be ended. I wanted to help them. What was this Andrew Doran that had slowed my embrace of the terror? The oily black horrors that had burrowed deep within my...

  A slap. Another slap. What had I done to deserve the slaps? This time it was on my face. I grasped at it and realized that my hands were free. Whatever had been holding them had finally released me. I could open my eyes now. I could fight.

  My eyes opened and they fell upon a girl. I lunged at her, but again I was grabbed. This time from behind. I bucked and kicked until I knew what this thing in front of me was. This girl.

  She was Nancy.

  I calmed and fought to remember why she was Nancy. She was Nancy because she was in Dyer’s office. Yig cultists had chased us until we had found Dyer...Dyer...Her father. William Dyer.

  Suddenly, my mind was my own again and I told Leo as much. When he finally believed me, he let me go and I sagged with my eyes closed as I spoke.

  “Where are we?”

  Leo answered. “We have moved about thirty yards into the new tunnel. Your trick worked. Nancy and I didn’t feel a thing.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “If you are alright to continue, you can open your eyes. We have gone around a corner and ‘The Pit’ is well out of sight.”

  I grabbed at the lighter from Nancy, flicked it on, and waved it about.

  “How close are we?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It will be at the end of this tunnel.”

  “I think that a more pressing question,” Leo said, “is how are we going to ever leave this place? Now we have added ‘The Pit’ to the list of things between us and returning home.”

  That list included an army of Nazis, a Nazi submarine, an ocean, and no ship to sail it with.

  I shook my head. “We will worry about that later. Not now, when we’re so close.” I nodded to Nancy and handed her back the lighter. “After you, m’lady.”

  She started off moving deeper into the tunnel. I started to follow but as I passed Leo he grabbed my arm.

  “Start thinking about how you’re getting home. If not for your sake, than for hers. She didn’t ask for any of this. She only wanted to find her father, and now he’s dead.”

  I pulled from his grip. “Don’t you think I know that?” Olivia’s words echoed again through my mind. “My initial plan had included the boat and killing a lot of Nazis. I didn’t want her getting mixed up in all of this, but now that we’re here the only viable plan is to move forward. I’ll figure this out.”

  “You had better.” Leo returned before setting off after Nancy.

  We walked another mile or so when Nancy stopped.

  Even with the lighter in her hand, my thoughts were so focused on how I would get us out of there that I still crashed into her and Leo.

  “Why did we stop?” I was confused because I didn’t see anything, but also excited because there are very few reasons why she would have stopped.

  “Because we’re here...and because of that.” Nancy held the lighter out in front of her and a large and decorated wall came into light.

  Except that it wasn’t a wall at all. A seam ran down the middle. It was so smooth that it almost wasn’t visible in the lighter light. I stepped in front of Nancy and ran my hand over the door.

  It was carved with geometric shapes that were mostly recognizable, but followed now specific pattern that I could see. After I examined the door, I turned to Nancy and raised an eyebrow.

  “If it’s a language, then I can’t read it.” She answered my unasked question.

  I couldn’t read it either, so I was willing to bet against it being any sort of language. As I felt more around the corners and curves of the door I decided that it must be artistic over functional.

  “How do we open it?” Leo asked.

  I shrugged. Using my fingernails, I tried to grab at the seam, but as I lifted my arms the wound in my shoulder sent shudders of pain through my body.

  Nancy looked at me and rolled her eyes. She stepped forward handing me the book and began feeling the door with both hands while I held the lighter above her. While she did that, I drew my sword and handed it to Leo, seeing as I couldn’t put my shoulder into any sort of leverage that would be useful.

  The magically inscribed blade wouldn’t fit into the seam. After several unsuccessful tries, he handed it back to me and I returned it to my scabbard.

  “Now what?” Leo asked.

  Before I could answer that I had no idea how we would move forward, Nancy surprised us both by demanding, “Light!”

  I brought the lighter in closer and she yanked it from my hand and flicked it back on when the light went out.

  “Look!” Nancy hissed the word.

  Nancy was indicating a place about a foot and a half taller than my head. It was a symbol with three scratches lines and a circle. One line came down with two running perpendicular and across the seam of the door. Between the two lines rested the circle.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s in the journal.” Nancy snatched it from my hand and handed me back the lighter. I wondered on the remaining fuel in the little firestarter as I held it over Nancy while she flipped through pages of symbols and scribbled notes.

  Finally, with confusion in her voice,
Nancy said, “I found it, I think.”

  I looked over her shoulder, and the symbol she was pointing at was definitely the one on the door.

  “What do you mean by ‘I think’?” I asked.

  “Well,” Nancy explained, “it means ‘thought,’ but what would ‘thought’ be doing written on a door?”

  I slapped my forehead and was painfully reminded of the cut I had sustained in the plane crash.

  “It’s because of the proto-shoggoths!” I exclaimed. “They were telepathic. That was how the Elder Things controlled them.”

  “What does that have to do with the door?” Leo asked.

  I pointed at my head, “Because telepathy will open it!”

  Leaning forward I began to gather my will when Nancy and Leo both grabbed my arms.

  “What if it’s a trap?” Nancy asked. Leo didn’t have to say anything. I could tell that he was thinking the same thing.

  “Can either of you cast your thoughts?” I demanded.

  In their silence I added, “Hardly seems like they would need to set a trap for their slaves and warriors. We’re in the proto-shoggoths’ tunnels. Nothing would come down here unless it had a death wish.”

  Before they could argue, I cast out my mind, found the mechanism to unlock the door and gave it a slight mental push.

  The door made absolutely no sound as it split and separated with each half retracting into the walls.

  “Warriors?” Leo asked.

  “What?” I returned.

  “You called the shoggoths their warriors.”

  “Yes,” I answered as I tried to peer into the vast darkness that I hoped was the very armory that we had sacrificed so much to get to. “So?”

  “They were warriors who were controlled by the Elder Things? Those beasts wielded them like weapons?” Leo continued, but I was only half listening.

  “Oh, no.” Nancy mumbled as I walked past her.

  As soon as my foot touched the floor of the armory, the entire place lit up brighter than any other room that we had been in that day. It was as if the sun itself was shining down on the Antarctic snow before being magnified to fill this chamber.